Top-shelf Tess in a fruitless search for a good read

Gosh, I thought, where do a public health minister's duties end in Cool Britannia?

It does not take much reflection to consider that unwanted teen pregnancies must be part of the brief. In the Lords last week someone said that 50.6 per cent of live births - more than half - in Dundee in 1996 were to unmarried women and that its teen pregnancy rate was also above the Scottish average. Why Dundee? Don't ask. The fact is the UK record overall is poor.

The White family has a special sympathy for Scotland's birthing industry, all the same. When we were struggling to feed Number 1 infant, our Scots midwife said that a drop of Scotch on cracked nipples usually cured them. I gratefully pass the tip on to Journal readers. Mrs White bumped into the midwife in the supermarket on Sunday and they recognised each other after 20 years. She's now 83 and coming round for tea - and Scotch.

Coincidentally, the Commons briefly debated the health select committee's 1996-97 report on the specific health needs of young people, with Ms Jowell again in the force. An odd situation, actually: when the report was drafted she was a committee member in Opposition. Now she is the minister.

It was one of those civilised debates in which even Patrick Nicholls, the Tetchy Teignbridge Tory, was polite about other parties - 'the Commons at its best', he called the report. Marion Roe, the Tory ex-chair, was nice to her Labour successor, David Hinchliffe, and vice-versa. Audrey Wise, the austere leftwinger, was nice too. So were two doctors, Peter Brand (Lib Dem) and Ina Gibson (Lab). No wonder it went unreported.

Lots of points emerged in the broad context of 100 years of improvement in child mortality. Too many children and teenies still get killed in traffic accidents, too many kids in social classes IV and V suffer more than their share of ill health. Ms Jowell was predictably keen on that point as Sir Donald Acheson revives the health inequality agenda.

Mr Hinchliffe even mentioned 'the dreaded head lice'. Whose responsibility is that: home, school or district nurse? They could have added suicides, especially of young men between 16-25, which (Dame Virginia pointed out at Question Time) kill more than car crashes. But what struck me in terms of hospital care was twofold.

One, the persistence of children in adult wards - far higher than the 1.2 per cent officially admitted. MPs and experts at the Royal College of Nursing seem to be agreed. I was in one myself in 1950, a long way from my Mum, and didn't enjoy it.

Second, the persistent absence of suitably qualified nurses. Only 3 per cent hold children's nursing qualifications, Mrs Wise told the House. Yet one third of accident and emergency patients are young people.

Placed in the wider context of children's community nursing services you get a picture of fragmentation and uncertainty. Yet there is Dobsonian money - cash, wonga, boodle - to be saved by keeping kids out of hospital, lots of it. Children and adolescents are especially vulnerable to mental health problems and often have to wait 12 months for appointments, said Mrs Roe with some feeling. Most of us can't imagine what the 'trauma' must be like, she said.

Eating disorders are a sign of pressure on our kids, David Hinchliffe pointed out. As with prison, it costs a lot more later on.

Just as Frank Dobson last week found an extra£10m in his desk drawer to help children's dentistry, so Ms Jowell was able to report that£2m of the mental health specific grant is earmarked for such problems. But she admitted that the available information on many such challenges is inadequate: ministers seek more.

One thing media-conscious New Labour ought to be able to fix is medical literature, making stuff given to children fit for children. As Marion Roe pointed out, that should not include advice on 'when to return to work or resume sexual intercourse'. This is where Ms Jowell first joined us on Channel 4 News . Where the public health minister stands on the Scotch-on-nipples issue remains unclear.